Many FMs participate in benchmarking programs to see where they stand in comparison to their peers. Energy costs continue to increase and there is increasing pressure to reduce costs, but what are the most effective programs to achieve savings? To develop a good strategy it would be helpful to know what others are doing and to consider approaches that have produced effective results. For that you’ll need comparisons of similar buildings using filters to select the characteristics of the facility you want to compare.
Let’s look at a few examples from FM BENCHMARKING to see the value that filters can bring to the analysis. In this example our facility is an 877,000 gross square foot (GSF) facility, 35 years old, with 1,963 FTEs (full-time equivalents), and with a primary business function of manufacturing.
In this example we have asked participants to identify the top four energy savings initiatives they plan to implement in the coming year. We have not used any filters in this example, and the response shows that ‘User/Occupant behavior changes are the highest ranked percentage at 39.6% (see Table I). This may be considered logical, as this initiative is the least costly one to implement.
The results might look significantly different if we applied some filters that more closely matched our facility. At 877,000 GSF this facility is in the large category so let’s see if that impacts the approaches used for energy initiatives.
In this size category, the initiative for “User/Occupant behavior changes” increases to 48.3% (see Table II). Companies in this size category probably have the means to promote energy conservation initiatives to their employees with dedicated resources.
This is a manufacturing facility so let’s see how the results compare with just manufacturing-type facilities. In Table III below the category initiative for “User/Occupant behavior changes” increases to 62.1% which is 22.5% greater than the unfiltered responses. Clearly, manufacturing facilities are in a position to influence behavior changes and the filters very readily show this.
As you can see, these are significant changes in our ranking position that are made simply by better peer group comparisons from applying filters. Similar analyses can be applied to the other initiatives being considered. These will help the FM determine the most appropriate initiatives to implement.
